I find that, once I do this in Miro, once I make a crazy cork-board and then iteratively prune and organise it, I end up in a place where I can talk fluently about the topic, without the need for flashcards.
The process of pruning and organising and clarifying makes it slot into my brain, vs at the beginning of the project there’s a feeling of overwhelm and a total lack of understanding of the gestalt of the thing
So maybe this is a form of hermeneutics, of engaging with the hermeneutic circle?
I dump all the context in Miro, I iteratively refine my understanding of different component parts, which feeds into my understanding of the whole. Then, with a better understanding of the whole, I can further reorganise and refine the component parts, deepening my understanding
From Bottom-up learning - what Michael talks about is also the hermeneutic circle, using Anki flashcards instead of Miro
By bottom-up learning I mean learning by collecting all the more basic, essential facts, memorising them, then going up to the next level of abstraction/complexity, memorising/grokking this level, then climbing up, etc
Michael Nielsen details it in his incredible Augmenting Long-Term Memory post from his Augmenting Cognition blog:
